Your iPhone, The Musical Instrument

Listen to the world play Ocarina by CogdogblogPhoto courtesy of Cogdogblog

More than a media player and much more than just a phone, the iPhone and iPod Touch is handy for many different interests. Music Developers out there already had the idea of using an iPhone as an instrument for a while now and there’s a lot they’ve come up with.

You may not know this, but there’s actually a ton of apps out there for music making purposes.

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Moving iTunes From One Mac / PC to Another

Moving iTunesPhoto courtesy of OS X

Our music collections outlast both our Macs and our iPods. As we upgrade or they break, at some point we’ll have to migrate our iTunes library from one Mac to another.

You may think that moving your iTunes Library from one Mac to another (or from a PC to a Mac) is tricky but actually it’s an easy process. To ensure everything goes well, you’ll want to follow each step carefully.

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Change your Audio / Video Formats with QuickTime

QuickTime 10.0 by Calu777Photo courtesy of Calu777

OS X is full of little features that are understated, yet extremely useful. Most of them are within less famous applications like Preview, Quicktime Player or Calculator. Sometimes you don’t find out about them until you stumble across them while working on something else.

I inadvertently found another one of these features the other day inside Quicktime Player…

Like it or not, there’s a zillion different file formats for Music, Movies, Text documents and Pictures. Sometimes you come across one that’s not standard like .MP3, .WAV/.AIFF, .JPG/.GIF, etc. In the past, you’d have to find a utility to convert the files from one format to another. You’d also have to hope that it was a Freeware or Open Source application. Luckily QuickTime Player will sort out your Audio / Video conversions needs, for free.

Before you begin:

On my Mac, I see the option for converting “Movie to Ogg”. I also know that Ogg Vorbis isn’t supported by QuickTime by default. This leads me to think that I can do all these cool conversions because I have some special plugins installed.

The first thing you should do, if you haven’t already is:

Download and install Perian and if you want to work with Ogg files, XiphQT.

Changing Audio / Video Formats within QuickTime Player:

- Open the file you wish to convert.

- In the Menu Bar, Click “File” and Choose “Export…”.

- The Save As: box will appear.

- At the Bottom, next to “Export:”, pick the format you’d like to convert to.

Quickly Convert Audio-Video Formats in Quicktime

- If you need, clicking “Options” will allow you to tweak advanced settings.

- Click “Save” and you’re done.

Missing Formats:

Some common formats are missing with this trick, such as .MP3 and .AAC. To easily convert them in OS X, use iTunes. So, to convert an Ogg file to .mp3, for use in an iPod or other player, use iTunes to do the conversion.


iTunes Home Sharing – What is it?

ITunes Home SharingPhoto courtesy of Apple

iTunes 9 brought us a new feature along with the store’s redesign – Home Sharing. Like many new features in Apple’s software, it’s either “What’s this for?” or “I must have it!”.

So, let’s take a look at Home Sharing and see: What exactly is it?, Why would you use it?, and finally What if it doesn’t work?

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Easily Convert Videos For Your iPod

HandbrakePhoto courtesy of Handbrake

Watching video on your iPod is a great way to spend a long airplane, bus, or train ride. Sometimes you can be lucky and your video will just work but with DVDs and downloaded content, you’re going to need to convert it first.

Getting video set up for iPods is actually easier than you may think. Here’s what you do:

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